Ticking Clocks
by Mrs. Abject
Summary: You can't get stood up if it's not a date. Oneshot, Miego-ish.


**Ticking Clocks  
**  
Rating: T, but just for safety pretty much.  
Warnings: Miego, which means spoilers for 3-4 and possibly 3-1, and too many references to coffee. Also some adult situations and angst, but nothing really that bad, which is why this is pretty much safety-rated.  
Disclaimer: I don't own the Ace Attorney series.  
A/N: This seriously should have been fluffier, and at this point in the game's timeline for them, it probably WAS fluffier, but I got started with unconfident post 3-4 Mia and it kinda went from there. Hopefully they're in character, please let me know. :3

* * *

It was one thing to be stood up for a date, and completely another to be stood up for a date at somewhere like this place. _Not that this was a date_, Mia quickly corrected herself, because it _wasn't_ a date. It wasn't anything even remotely like a date, unless by "date" one meant "meeting a co-worker to talk about a legal case", and those two things had very, very different meanings.

And this wouldn't have even been much of a date, if in fact it _had _been set up that way, if he really _had_ asked her out so blatantly. Which it hadn't, and he hadn't, respectively. If Mia had wanted to start dating again, not that she did (although really, it _had_ been a while), she wouldn't have chosen this particular location for a date to take place, or go on a date geared toward feeding Diego Armando's caffeine addiction at what was probably the _most_ tacky little coffee shop in the history of tacky little coffee shops, which Diego liked and Mia didn't. The walls were mostly painted a horrible shade of orange (what wasn't covered in orange was covered in sappy prints, mostly jokes about the life of a coffee nut), and there were oddly-shaped stuffed bears and plastic figurines displayed all over the place. Mia thought she could identify a "barista bear", and then sincerely hoped she was wrong. There were not only one, but three different clocks based on "Coffee Time!", although Mia could only think of one person who would consider it "Coffee Time!" at, say, one in the morning, or eight at night. She smiled, in spite of herself. The clocks were loud, ticking away the seconds, and Mia supposed it was her own fault for sitting right next to one of them. It gave the sense where she could feel every little second between when Diego said he would show up, and when he actually did.

Perhaps Diego didn't really want to stay at the coffee shop. Mia could only hope so. He had asked her to meet her there (quite forwardly, even, although that alone didn't make it a date); that didn't mean they had to stay, and any moment now, he would just show up and they could get out of here and discuss the case… somewhere else. Maybe the office, or on one of the benches they had outside, or even in Diego's surprisingly comfortable apartment (she blushed at the thought)… just not here. She had found a table on the side, one where Diego could see her when he walked through the door, but still a bit out of the way. The waitress coming around had a shrill, loud voice, and even though Mia tried to tune it out, she could still hear a loud conversation coming from the middle of the restaurant about fishing, or… perhaps something that fishing stood as a metaphor for. She'd sat away from the other customers so she could just wait in peace, and she didn't really want to have to listen to them talk about fishing (or whatever they _really_ were talking about), but here they were, prattling on regardless, and here she was, overhearing their conversation because Diego wasn't there yet, and despite the fact that this really wasn't a date, the matter of getting stood up was exactly the same…

The truth of the matter was, Mia had found the restaurant a lot less annoying fifteen minutes ago, when Diego would still have been on time. The orange hadn't been that bad (she remembered reading somewhere that the color orange was supposed to make you feel hungry, and since this was a restaurant, sort of, the paint job seemed almost justified), and she even thought Maya would get a kick out of the coffee clocks. She'd have to give her sister a call later to tell her about it, although Maya would probably think that this simple, professional meeting was supposed to be something like a date.

No, it really wasn't that horrible here. Mia was just grouchy, and she knew it—fifteen minutes late really wasn't a big deal, but he should have been considerate enough to call. She'd given him her number… and out of context, it sounded almost to her as if she'd _given him her number_, but no, of course not, they worked together for crying out loud, it wasn't… it wasn't anything. Not necessarily.

It wasn't as if Diego had never been late for anything before. Being late was a completely normal human thing, and Diego certainly did it enough—or maybe it was more that he was never early when the situation called for it. Like with the trial, _that_ trial, where he'd barely gotten there on time, and Mia didn't like the direction this was going at all, so she cleared her head, looked around. She noticed the staff starting to look at her suspiciously, and remembered how one time when Diego had launched into a conversation about coffee shops, which he did at least occasionally, he had mentioned the people who didn't actually want coffee, but were there only to use the free internet without paying for a drink. (Why were all of her memories so related to him? She was so clingy, so dependant lately.) What bothered him wasn't so much the way they stole the internet, but that they didn't appreciate the coffee enough to order it when they were already there.

And it had only been fifteen minutes, but _Diego_? Late to a _coffee shop_? He wasn't exactly the most punctual man she knew, but when Diego was late, it was usually because of coffee in the first place. Perhaps he'd stopped to get coffee on the way to the coffee here, but… coffee was coffee. Maybe Mia was starting to like the stuff better since she had started spending more time with Diego, but it couldn't he just hold off on getting more of it until he met up with her? Yes, that had to be it. He couldn't hold off, and he'd made himself late because of it. Maybe there was a line, or maybe he just couldn't find a parking space, or some other thing that happened when you went to get yourself a javaccino. Well, there was her explanation.

Perhaps he'd be a while. Mia ordered herself a cup of coffee, mostly because she was not there to steal the internet—she hadn't even brought her laptop with her, even though it _was_ a business-related meeting—and she didn't want anyone thinking she was there to steal the internet, either. She just wanted to meet up with Diego, and if she had one cup of coffee before he showed up, that would be okay, she could just order another one once he got there. She wasn't really stood up at all. How could she be? Who ever heard of somebody stood up to sit around and talk about the law?

* * *

He must have been working on a case. Yes, that was it. He'd told her he was going to go look into something before he came to meet her, and maybe he'd left himself plenty of time, but things had a habit of running late. Diego had a habit of running late. But he could have at least called her… She opened up her briefcase and fished around in the paperwork for her phone. Stupid paperwork. Maybe… maybe she'd be ready to go back to taking her own cases sometime soon, instead of just paperwork and helping Diego. She didn't really mind it, but she was here to be a lawyer in her own right. No, she was here to find out what happened to her mother. _No_. She was looking for the answer, and all of this was just one big distraction. It was meaningful and important, but she was there to find her mother and then there was Diego and all of _this_ and she just couldn't remember the bigger picture anymore.

No, it wasn't really as clear-cut as it had been when she'd joined, and it didn't help that she'd lost that something that had driven her to success in court.

No new messages, no new calls. He should have at least called if he was going to be late. It was already half an hour past when he said he would show up, and he really should have called. _Really. _He had her number! There better be a good reason… and knowing Diego there probably was. Perhaps something new in the case had come up, and there really wasn't a choice when the options would be pursue the case, or go drink a cup of coffee with Mia to report on the case. This was about the case, anyway, and she wouldn't want him to put aside the case to come talk about the case with her, but she wished he was here. This place was getting on her nerves, and even if she tried to just concentrate on something else, the whole place smelled like coffee, which smelled like Diego, and that kept reminding her that he hadn't shown up.

She hated to think it, but even though if she were to start dating again she would want non-coffee-centered dates, she wouldn't want them with anyone but Diego.

Maybe she should call him and find out exactly _what_ was taking him so long. She opened up her phone again, and pressed the button set to "Diego"—_how pathetic, you have him on your speed dial?_—and waited, hoping he'd pick up the phone, and tell her where the hell he was, or maybe just fill her in on the details of the case. She didn't really know which one he meant. There was the one with the arsonist that was almost over, and he'd picked up a murder trial recently, too, or maybe it was something different all together… she wanted to know what was going on just as badly as he did, and she held the phone to her ear, sort of nervous and excited at the same time.

"Hello, you've reached Diego Armando…" An answering machine (the first time she'd heard it, she'd been surprised it was so short and to the point, no coffee metaphors or anything). He had his phone turned off. Okay, so perhaps receiving phone calls might harm the investigation. She understood. But really, it wouldn't have been so hard to just call, to let her know she'd be waiting in this stupid coffee shop for a while before he finally had the time to show up. She hung up the phone. Anything she could say in the message didn't sound like something she'd want to say to him, because this wasn't a date. He was full of smiles and nice things to say, but that was just _him_, and she wouldn't act like she wanted anything different from him, she just wouldn't.

Things were fine how they were. They cared about each other, and supported each other, and worked together on the cases. They were meeting as coworkers to talk about a business matter, and because of that business matter he wasn't there yet, which was both perfectly understandable and perfectly infuriating. She wouldn't leave a whiney message about how he hadn't shown up and she _missed_ him.

She had bought a newspaper, and somehow worked her way to the crossword already—it was something to do while she waited. A plastic figurine of some superhero who apparently drank a lot of coffee seemed to be staring her in the face, and since the figurine was modeled to look quite caffeinated, it had something of a disturbing effect. The clock was still going, counting off the wasted moments of her time. She could have been working, or even helping Diego investigate… and usually he did ask her or invite her along… and now her coffee was getting cold, too. She'd been drinking it slowly, even though she'd put a few of those packets of sugar into the drink—Diego wasn't around to complain about how she was _ruining_ it—but she'd wanted it to last until he finally got there. Which it didn't seem to stand a chance of doing, since it had been half an hour already and he still wasn't there.

This was another reason to start working her own cases again. She'd never be stuck in a coffee shop waiting for herself to show up after finishing her own investigation, and if she could just get over whatever it was that made her content to work on the sidelines, even happy to do so, then maybe she'd be able to move up the ladder again, to get closer to finding her mother. TO be a better lawyer. She would miss working with Diego, because honestly, no matter how bad he could get, they did make a good team. But she couldn't just stay… whatever she was. A legal assistant that didn't bother showing up in court, because she was too _traumatized_? Diego was pulling strings to keep her on the payroll, and she knew it, and maybe he could keep it up until she got her nerves back, but she couldn't stand it. She wanted to be there on her own merit… not that it mattered, because she was there for a reason, but it mattered to her. And Mia didn't want it to be true, but she knew exactly what made her accept the situation as it was.

She sipped down the rest of her cold coffee, and waited.

* * *

That was it. Mia folded the newspaper, no, crumpled it, and stuffed it into her briefcase. Either it had been the longest investigation Mia had ever heard of in her life, or Diego really had stood her up. She had finished reading the news, even gotten a good start on the crossword puzzle, of all things, until she'd been unable to get any farther without thinking of a six letter word for mollusk, or a three-word existentialist play that fit in the number of blanks the puzzle gave her. She couldn't even remember what the hell existentialism even was, even when she thought back as hard as she could to high school English, where she was sure they covered this sort of thing. Crossword puzzles were written for people who wanted to waste their time, not for people who really were hoping Diego would walk through the door any moment. By all accounts, she really should have given up and left by now. She wasn't impatient. She'd proven it now, she was _not_ an impatient woman, but damn it, it really wasn't about the wasted time, it was about the nervous, paranoid way it made her feel when he hadn't even bothered to keep his plans.

She was probably more stubborn than any stood-up woman that this place had seen before. She wasn't sure whether that was a good thing, but she hadn't been stood up, not really. Diego wouldn't have done that. She didn't think so. He liked her, even if it was only in that Diego sort of way that could probably have applied to anything in a skirt. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't and there was something genuine and personal there. At least, Mia thought he liked her. Maybe. Just yesterday, when they'd agreed to meet up here in the first place… or really, when he told her to come meet him here, that was more like what it had been… he had liked her. He'd poured her a drink, moved in to kiss her, and it had just been a joke, really, since he laughed when she pulled away because _we're at work, Diego_, but she laughed while doing it, so they were even. And he'd told her flattering things, about her pretty eyes and smile, but it was the kind of thing he would say.

And even worse, she'd wanted him to mean it, or to mean the type of feelings that would usually accompany saying those things. Maybe he did, even though he'd acted the same way probably to countless other girls he found pretty.

It was easy to explain why she liked him, even though it shouldn't have been—he was kind of annoying, what with the constant stream of coffee-related metaphors, and he was pretty condescending… and the cocky self-assurance that more often than not turned out to be right on the spot, and _then_ there was the way he smiled at her. Oh, _the way he smiled at her_. He didn't even _hide_ it, like it was necessary to his existence to be such a goddamn flirt, and the worst part was that she couldn't even properly be annoyed at it, not with the way it made her go all weak in the knees just like he probably intended it to, and then the way that even if he _was_ a goddamned flirt, he really did seem to care about Mia, really took care of her, like when he just held her in his arms when she broke down, and let her share his cases, and didn't even seem to push her to take her own cases again... Yes, she would definitely miss him once she started working her own cases, even though he would still of course be right there, three rooms over in the office.

_Why wasn't he there yet_? Didn't he want to see her? Maybe if she waited long enough (to do what?), there would be a time when he didn't want to see her, when she really didn't mean anything special to him, or when she was just Mia, something personalized but too familiar to be interesting. And in a way, he did mean it, she knew he did, but she was too stubborn to just do what he wanted her to, or to be the first one to ask. Or maybe she was too stubborn to risk embarrassing herself around someone so insufferably cool that she could just see herself looking like a dumb little hanger-on, like she'd given in to the advances he'd made in the very beginning, back when he didn't know her and expected her to fall into his lap, been the kind of person that he really wouldn't have been interested in for long, anyway. Or maybe she wouldn't let herself be hurt if he didn't feel the same as she did, if he hadn't been as… invested in this.

There was no point in being shy with herself. He'd done more than pretend to kiss her, and she'd done more than laugh and lean away. Sometimes things just happened, and life went on even when they happened without a clear reason, and Mia went on, too, wondering if the things that happened occurred because he cared about her enough, or because Mia was needy and Diego was Diego, but this hadn't been a date. He hadn't spelled it out, and she wasn't about to ask him for sure, but she was safe in just assuming that it wasn't a date, even if they did end up back at Diego's apartment again, even if he did take her hand when he led her down the hall, and even if once they were inside, they made sure to lock the door.

It was amazing, the excuses she made to avoid taking the risk, although if he really liked her as much as she thought he did, he was avoiding taking the risk for real, too…

She wouldn't do it anymore. She wouldn't waste any more time. When he showed up, she'd tell him, because she really did like him enough, even if she wasn't in this job for the job itself, even if he couldn't show up on time or have a normal conversation without babbling randomly about fucking _coffee_… and then she realized that this was like working her own cases. It was something she was just saying to herself without actually meaning that she would do it, and she knew. Maybe they _were_ in a relationship. Maybe she just didn't get it. Maybe someday they'd look back at this and laugh, about how Mia had been too scared for months now to tell Diego that she loved him. No, she could never be _that _blunt. "Love" was a powerful word, scary and risky even if she… even if she meant it. Her newfound bravery was an excuse. She was stuck. She loved him, but she couldn't tell him. She loved him, but she was afraid to ask whether he loved her, too.

She wouldn't think of herself as in love. She was… in a garish, ugly coffee shop, and that was a better thing to concentrate on at the moment, even if Diego hadn't shown up.

Maybe Diego was almost done with… whatever it is he was doing. Mia thought about calling him again, but after a moment she found that she was afraid to. Perhaps he really did leave her in the stupid coffee shop on purpose, or maybe he'd just forgotten about her, and perhaps it wasn't realistic at all—Diego wouldn't just forget to show up unless something _very_ important had come up—but she knew if she called, she'd find out once and for all, and this was just odd. She was scrambling to come up with some kind of explanation, but for now, all she could do was wait… and she wasn't exactly sure that she would _want_ to know whatever it was.

The old Mia would have dealt with it right away, called Diego and told him what an inconsiderate jerk her was being for showing up so late _and_ that she wanted a real relationship, all in the same phone message (and if she had been the old Mia, no doubt he would have picked up the phone right away. If he could. _No_, she told herself. _Don't think that way_, but she was, and no matter how hard she tried, she saw Terry Fawles slumped dead over the witness stand, Mia powerless to help him… and even then, Diego had been there for her, maybe really _been there_ for her for the first time…)

She dismissed the thought, the sudden sense of fear, as just some weird combination of stress and nervousness and unwillingly falling head over heels, even as she reminded herself that she_ was a Fey for heaven's sake_ and this maybe wasn't just a meaningless feeling. She ignored it, ordered another cup of coffee… hell, she was turning into him, wasn't she? She laughed, and then felt a little better.

* * *

That was it. Really, that was it—it had been almost two hours, and she was almost to the point of tears. A horrible panicking feeling was building in her chest, and she couldn't take it anymore. If he didn't mean to show up, he could have told her, and if he did mean to show up… no, that couldn't have happened. Nothing could have happened to Diego. He was a constant in her life, the kind of person who would always be there to protect her and take care of her… but that also meant he wouldn't have done this without a reason, a good reason… and that stupid clock was still going at it. The employees were looking at her with a sense of pity now, such an obvious case of waiting for someone that never showed up.

She almost had to trick herself into it, calling his number again before she could really get scared, letting herself have some sort of peace of mind, and then once the phone was ringing, she felt that surge of panic again. He didn't like her. Something had happened to him. Something was wrong, something was wrong… She heard him pick up the phone.

"Hello?" she said, not bothering to hide the apprehension in her voice.

The voice wasn't Diego's.

"Who is this?"

"Mia Fey," she replied automatically. Whatever she'd expected, it wasn't this. "Where's Diego? I… I want to talk to him, please…" Whoever it was on the other end… the voice sounded official, maybe a police officer or something, and she hoped beyond hope that he wasn't, that this wasn't something horrible and tragic. It could have just been a lost cell phone. Diego could have dropped his phone, and… and… she was grasping, but she had to, it couldn't be…

The voice took a deep breath.

"There's been an accident at the courthouse, Ms. Fey… I'm sorry…"

After a date that didn't happen, in what was possibly the worst coffee shop she had ever seen, next to a clock that she could barely hear anymore, shocked and crying and _no, Diego… no, it couldn't be, please,_ Mia broke down.


End file.
